A wireless router is a simple device that shares Internet access to your home without the need for cables. For the most part, it just works. Once you’ve turned it on, you don’t really need to touch it ever again.

But if you do that, you’re likely missing out on a lot of extra features — ones that could make your network perform more smoothly, improve your gaming experience, and enable you to control who is on your network and when.

In this guide, we’ll take a look at ten extra features your router may offer to see what makes them useful and how you could benefit by using them.

1. Encryption

If you only use a single feature offered by your router, it should be the security feature. The moment you activate one of the router’s security modes, you are preventing anyone without the password from accessing your network, and you are also encrypting the data that travels between the network and the computer or device.

Many routers offer a MAC Address filtering function. You can block specific devices from connecting to your network by filtering their MAC Address, or for even greater security, create a list of only those devices that are allowed to connect.

It’s a good way of maintaining control of your network, but you shouldn’t overdo it. You don’t really want to have to log in to your router’s configuration panel every time a friend wants to connect to the Internet in your house just because you’ve blocked all non-approved devices.

There are 65,536 ports in total, and for security reasons most of them are blocked by default. If software or services use non-standard port ranges, the router might not know which device the data should go to.

If you have this problem, then you need to start using the port forwarding feature. Port forwarding explicitly tells the router to direct traffic on a range of ports to a specific device attached to your network. Fortunately, you won’t need to worry about port forwarding for most applications.

Examples of when you might need it, however, include gaming consoles like the Xbox One and PS4 — and even some specific games such as Call of Duty or Star Wars: Battlefront can benefit can benefit from port forwarding — as well as Bittorrent clients.

When your bandwidth is being maxed out by multiple applications and devices, applications that need a lot of bandwidth — like video calls or online gaming — can experience massively downgraded performance.

With QoS, you can simply instruct your router to prioritize the traffic to these applications at the expense of those that need less bandwidth or are less important, such as cloud backups happening in the background.

Some routers also offer Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM) support, which is a specialized kind of QoS. When activated, it automatically prioritizes voice, audio, and video data in an attempt to improve multimedia performance.

5. Channels

Wi-Fi routers transmit data on one of several different “channels”. If there are lots of routers in the vicinity and they’re all set to use the same channel, their signals will likely interfere and cause slowed performance across all of the affected routers.

You can identify the best channel to use with the WiFi Analyzer app for Android, WiFiInfoView for Windows, or by using the built-in Wireless Diagnostics tool on OS X (hold the Alt key and click the Wi-Fi icon to access it).

But before you make the switch, you should know that in order to use the 5 GHz band, all of your connected devices will also need to support it (whereas every device is guaranteed to support 2.4 GHz). Some routers can use both bands simultaneously, but if your does not, you will need to stick with the frequency that all your hardware can work with.

7. Shared File Access

Lots of modern routers come with a USB port hidden away around the back. You might not even have noticed it on your own device.

The way the USB port works will vary from one router to the next. Some will only allow one computer to access the drive at a time, while others offer additional functionality like getting the drive to work as a media server, which allows you to stream content to connected devices.

It’s also often possible to attach other USB devices, including printers. (Although many printers these days come with built-in Wi-Fi, so this possibility may be of less use.)

Guest mode sets up a kind of sub-network with its own SSID and its own password, meaning it will appear to be a separate network to people trying to connect. Connected users get access to the Internet and nothing else, and you can restrict the number of people that can connect at any one time.

The exact features can range from content filtering to the ability to restrict the hours during which certain sites can be accessed. You can even shut Internet access down entirely according to a preset schedule.

Parental controls tend to work either on a device-by-device basis, such as by using the MAC address of your child’s iPad or laptop, or by creating “bypass” accounts that the adults in the household can use to bypass the parental control limits and gain unrestricted access.

10. Mobile Management Apps

Many of the features listed above are configured through the router’s control panel, which is typically accessed through a Web browser. But some of the more consumer-oriented routers are now increasingly able to be controlled via smartphone apps.

Many manufacturers, including Linksys and Netgear, have iPhone and Android apps for some of their newer router models. With these apps, you can manage things like guest access and parental controls, quality of service settings, and perform basic diagnostic tasks like resetting the router if your Internet goes down.

It’s worth checking whether your current router has a companion app that you can use. If not, and you think this feature is one that you’d absolutely love using, then you may want to consider upgrading to a newer model.

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Kim Würtz

September 17, 2016 at 11:58 pm

Can I link an old wireless Router with build in LAN cable switch to my new wireless Router so I could have an extra (Router) in another room and where the signal i a bit week?
I would like to connect my Raspberry Pi 3 Multimedia via LAN cable in a room apart from the place where our family main Router is placed. The signal is week in this room and the Raspberry Pi 3 with its one Wi-Fi is not strong enough.
It would be great to use the "old" Wi-Fi Router as an access point in this room and still get Internet and streaming channel to devises in other rooms via the "new" Router witch is connected to the Internet via coax cable outlet in the living room.

This article makes the assumption that you have already connected to your router and the FIRST THING you did is to change the Administrator password. A Google search will show you have to connect to your router ie. Google "how to connect to my linksys router" (or whatever router you have).

"If your router supports the 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard, then it supports the 5 GHz frequency " 5GHz on 802.11n isn't required, but many routers (and adapters) do support it.
Also, MAC address filtering has become all but useless, since many OSes (such as iOS 8 and higher) have built-in spoofing or randomizing features.

Yes, VPN over the router is great. But if you want VPN to connect from outside to your home network, you don't need a paid-for solution. You just need a dynamic DNS address linked to an static http-address - a feature which you can get for free - and a router which functions as VPN server - most newer router can do this. I do this every day, and it does not cost me a cent.
Of course, if you need VPN to conceal your place to a webservice, like trying to watch a TV stream from a another country, then the situation is different. At this point, you need an external VPN server - which cost you a monthly fee.

Andy is a former print journalist and magazine editor who has been writing about technology for 15 years. In that time he has contributed to countless publications and produced copywriting work for large tech companies. He has also provided expert comment for the media and hosted panels at industry events.